In last week’s workshop, we were asked to create a game involving a few small props. Our group was given some glass counters (I don’t know how else to describe them other than that they are the same type used to represent hit points in the Pokémon card game) and a tennis ball. We developed a game where players connect two desks lengthwise to form the playing field. The idea was for each player to set up his tokens on his half of the playing field, and for players to take turns rolling the ball in an attempt to knock the opponent’s markers off the field.

But I can’t be marked on what happened in the workshop, so I will discuss the game created by a fellow group that we got to play in the latter half of the class. Called Snapponaire – the lovechild of card games Snap and Billionaire – the game introduced a higher level of physical manipulation to the traditional game of Snap.

Game play followed as this: players were dealt a hand of cards from the Billionaire deck, bar the single instances of the Taxman and Billionaire cards. All other cards included a picture of some class of businessman with his trade (such as Oil or Media). Players took turns placing an unseen card from the top of their hands onto a face-up pile in the middle of the playing group. Next to the pile was a plastic golf ball, and when a player placed a card on top of the pile that had the same face as the previous top-card (as is the case in Snap), players had to claim the pile by snatching the golf ball, as opposed to being the first to place (or rather swat) a hand on top of the pile. The player claiming the pile would then add the pile cards to his hand and a new stack would be created.

Besides the mathematical differences of probability between playing with a deck of pipped cards (or even a Snap-designed deck) brought by using this system, the element of claiming the pile has been transformed from a straightforward swatting of the hand to a (slightly) more complex action of picking up a ball. This has several influences on the ability of each player to win the game. Firstly, players will need to have developed a higher level of motor skills and coordination in order to grab the ball (Snap is generally regarded as a children’s game for its simplicity). This may make the game less accessible to some players for that reason. Secondly, the placement of the ball in relation to the pile has not been specified by the rules. Common sense says that it should be near the stack, but because the stack in the centre, the ball has to be placed closer to some players than others. One remedy would be to place the ball near the stack, on the side farthest from the previous stack winner, but it may put some players at a disadvantage if the ball was alternately placed in front of two, oppositely seated, players that frequently claimed the stack.

When a player ran out of cards, he had to choose from one of the down-turned Taxman and Billionaire cards. If the Taxman was chosen, that player was out of the game. If the Billionaire was revealed, that player got to keep the top card from the stack and play it next turn. Play continued until there were two players remaining and one player picked up the Billionaire card after emptying his hand. This would result in the other player winning the game.

We discussed ways of making the game more balanced. One of the issues was that since the active player’s playing hand was closest to the stack when playing a card, that player would also be the closest to the ball if his card happened to open the stack up for ‘snapping’. In this situation, the active player had an unfair advantage over the other players. This may have been an effect that was intended, but it took away from the concept of all players competing to take the pile by reflexes, not by chance. A suggested solution was to disallow the player from taking the pile on his turn, leaving the battle to all other players. This would work well up to the point where there were two remaining players and then the game would then be determined by chance as only one player could ‘compete’ for the pile at a time.

My suggestion was to allow players to look at their hands, to see what cards were in it, but then have to turn them face down until the pile was claimed. This meant that players had some agency over what cards were added to the stack, and if a player memorised his hand well, he could avoid being the one to place a double card on the pile, and thus leaving the pile for collection by one of his opponents.

At its heart, I feel that Snap is a game for children can play to learn symbol recognition and physical reflex, so some of the issues I have discussed are not necessarily relevant if this new version of the game is intended for such a young audience. We could not expect a complex game to have been produced with such a small number of props in the time allocated, but it is evident that Snapponaire would need some of its game play aspects to be addressed if it were to be played by an older audiences with more complex demands of their gaming experiences.